Reunited
by teseractprism
Summary: Crossover of OCs from a D&D gameverse with the world created in Ann Maxwell's Timeshadow Rider. Rated M for language, adult situations and themes. Early chapters move between current time of story and flashbacks to lead in events referenced. Other OCs and canon charas as we go. Some pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

At the edge of the Joining, once shrouded by a physical near impossibility to reach via magnetic and ionic anomalies, and a psychic barrier courtesy the Eyes of Za'ar, a legendary Kiri weapon, spun a world one million years wrapped in peace. Za'arain. A world home to those of the fourth evolution, humans known as the Kiri who not only experienced life through linear time, but lived within time itself. A million years protected by isolation and exile. Exile promoted isolation and isolation required exile for a tabu also existed among the Kiri. The Kiri a race multi-fingered beings where fours and sixes formed communities but fives lived only to dream, awaiting their time to either take up their duty to the Eyes or die into timeshadows of the then and now. But all things end and so did the time of Kiri isolation. Lias'tri. A calling between souls to find one another or go mad in loneliness from the now through the now and into the infinite other. Lias'tri joins the heart and the mind of the souls belonging to one another and what the heart requires would not be denied.

A new Kiriy's choice to serve their people left her refusing her forbidden half. Refual brought madness to a new Dustman and begat a psionic plague known as the winnowing as answer to his own exile for the sacrifice of his other half, his beloved to the Eyes, his Lias'tri; his hunger, her completion. Eyes whose only answer to lias'tri between fives resulted in division of life, a refined torture to mind and body. And the winnowing spread, consuming the lives of any being with even the slightest of psionic gifts, spiraling from the wastes and followed by the Dustman SaDyneen ZaDarien/Kiri, it's creator, back to Za'arain as the Kiriy, his denied lost soul fell to the winnowing into the infinite other. Za'arain fell without a Kiriy to take up the Eyes and Kiri atavism reduced the once calm civilization to roaming packs of psi-hunters bent on consuming not only their own, but also all of the Joining.

The Kiriy's final act to call two other candidates, each Darien and five, Sharia ZaDarien/Kiri and Kanaen ZaDarien/Kiri, to the Eyes, both tabu. Both candidates Lias'tri denied as well, and combined a wildfire psi capable of consuming both psi-active and psi-null minds. In the end the Dustman failed to hold and be accepted by the Eyes, nor did the Eyes accept either of the candidates. Fourth evolution salvation came not at the hands of weaponry, not by wildfire, and not by disease. It came through a willingness to receive the inevitable, to yield to lias'tri and break tabu between fives amidst the raving psi-hunters. Yet consummation of lias'tri gave way to dreaming and dreaming led to awakening within the hunters' minds and that collaboration of dreams suggesting hope for the future of Za'arain and the Joining.

And many millennia passed, Za'arain once again in peace. And the Joininng continued to receive the Kiri from time to time, though none of them in exile. And eventually Sharia and Kane returned again, coming together without fear or harm, giving of this last union a daughter, possessed of a singular wildfire mind among the Kiri. And thus, a new discovery and evolution of the Kiri began.


	2. Chapter 2

Shock ripped Eri from her meditations. Puzzled, she rose, tracing over the timeshadows she felt near to her mind, the psionic's hair quivering. One vibrated taught then stilled. Grief wailed through consciousness, emptiness leaping swiftly behind, the force of both dropping Eri to the floor of her room. She rose again carefully, dazed, searching for the pain's source before it completely overwhelmed her. She left her quarters unaware of the action and soon found herself viewing a most depressing scene. Lord Roukan, a drawn look upon his face directs a group of priestesses at his second son, Satyesu's, chambers. "Wrap each and every item in this room carefully. Nothing, and I mean nothing is to be directly touched if you value your lives. The poison that took Satyesu from us has covered everything in these rooms." Eri witnesses the tender, almost reverent manner of the well covered servants complying with the lord's orders. He turns to the Head priestess, "See to it that everything removed is burned completely, including these clothes. I will not risk anyone else coming into contact with this. See to it the rooms are fully purged. If you cannot remove this toxin then seal the rooms for everyone's protection. I must see to Elisa." With those final words the grief stricken lord strode purposefully away toward his and his mate's chambers.

Eri watched the proceedings from the hallway, leaning against the wall near the room. She stops the last priestess exiting once the last of the objects was removed. "While I cannot heal or protect spiritually against this entity as you and your sisters do, I can protect those who remain by removing the toxin from this place." Eri removed the chains of silver mithril bells and Xtyian crystals from my hair, passing them to the nearest priestess, Siyah. "Please, hold these and seal the door behind me. I will rejoin you at the burning once this task is done." Sable accepts the chains and Eri nods in thanks as she entered the room, waiting until the door is sealed.

The living hair of the Za'arainian descendent, a fourth evolution human, began to unwind revealing the scintillating colors of time in its deep red depths, reached into the room's shadows. Eri cried out as the wildfire built within her, hungry for the foreign contamination in the room, just as her inner lids closed to reveal violet psi-hunter eyes. As the veil of time opened, she unleashed the wildfire, threading herself into the shadows to the point of the toxin's entrance. The poison's color difficult to identify, more a dulling and seeping of the life in the room into the infinite other than a distinct particle or presence. She pressed press against its pull, destroying its connection to this place, time unraveling into various colors before she refocused, smoothing the gap in the room's past, combing the threads into a new weave, one absent the lethal taint. Layers of the heavy stone walls and floor disintegrate into dust pressure dropping in the room. She coughs as the dust falls, the tainted layers of stone reduced to sand. Eri's grief for these good people in their loss not quelled, the wildfire takes hold and she screams, lashing out at the door, the softer wooden material consumed completely where the stone only thinned.

A following rush of air into the room shocks and calms her somewhat. The reweaving flow of living time soothes and dilutes the call of chaos, yet work still remains unfinished. Following the trail of the removed objects now sensed through the moving air, she tears traces of the poison left in their wake and the air pops and snaps in protest. Eri continues in her consumption of passive death from the room to find the fire and she cannot bear how slowly the bonfire reduces the offending materials. Wildfire beckons again and this time she yields to it, slashing the poison's tendrils, leaving the shadow gaps as fuel for the fire to crush it, dead time to scatter it, leaving no trace as the toxin flows into the infinite other. No ash remains, the objects running down to bare mineral earth and base metals. Eri cries out again with the struggle to return from the edge of her mind, hearing the priestesses hard at their work and knowing she is no longer alone. She collapses in exhaustion, her hand digging into the cool, soft soil. "Bind my hair, before I am unable to stop it again," she pleads, her breath barely a whisper. One of the priestesses nods, laying her own garment over her hair. As Eri pushes back against the wildfire, losing her battle to stay awake even as her eyes widened with the realization that the hunter's veil had not yet lifted from her eyes as the mithril chains were wrapped about her hair.

~0~

Slowly entering the keep after the service for Satyesu and Kosame, sadness wound through all of Elisa's form. Lord Roukan guides her to her favorite chair in the library and she sits, sighing. The tears still moist on her cheeks, Elisa looks up at him, words she wanted, needed, to say at the service not coming easily to her lips.

"My love? Tell me he will not be forgotten. I barely remember him ever being sad or unhappy. Not until recently. I remember the day he was born, his wild, younger years. His sweet, angelic face peeking out from the bassinet would melt your heart. He was our little seeker as his name means. Even his rebellious streak was full of life. He mooned you and was basically telling the world to kiss his ass and then he tried to bite you."

Elisa bit back another sob and clutched Roukan's hand close to her heart. "He loved his family deeply and I know he didn't mean the hurtful things he told his wife in their last fight. But they were so harsh that she just couldn't excuse them. He couldn't accept that and his pain closed him off, made him vulnerable to the attack. This is not our way to let harmful things so close. We must not allow anyone else to fall to this again!" Elisa looked up at him, tear soaked eyes pleading.

Roukan looks down on Elisa's face, into her eyes. His free hand reached out and wiped the tears from her face. "It WILL NOT!" his voice heavy with grief. "We need to move forward. Celebrate in his life not mourn his death. Let us prepare a banquet for family and friends to come and pay their respects," his manner leaving no uncertain terms. "We need those closest with us now, as do Satyesu and Kosame's children. We must think of them now. You need to focus on helping them now."

"Yes, my love. That would be something he would have liked, not this overwhelming sadness." As she gets up she starts to head out of the room looking over her shoulder. "I love you my dearest Roukan."

"And I you my sweet Elisa ."


End file.
